You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.